Ethereal
by Domicile
Summary: “I don’t know how to fix us.” She says and it’s so innocent and so honest you want to tell her everything’s okay and everything’s back to normal now, but you both know its not, so why would she believe you? Cam oneshot that's just really freaking long


You haven't seen Sam in fifteen days. Fifteen days, thirteen hours, and twelve minutes. And it sends you into panic like the sky is falling outside and you can't really seem to bust out of it. You keep calling her, texting her, calling her mom, calling everyone Sam spends time with when she's not with you, and people either haven't seen her in a few days or don't answer. Your fighting tears, fighting screaming, fighting every rash, over the top reaction as you pace your brother's loft, your feet making loud slapping noises against the floor. But god.

It's a quarter to midnight when your phone rings and you're awake it feels like before the ringtone even starts because you hadn't really been sleeping anyway. You flip it open and jam it against your ear with more force than necessary. And you cry as Ms. Puckett tells you Sam asked her to call you and let you know she's okay. You demand of her over and over to tell you what happened, but she says Sam will tell you and she's sleeping now, but its okay if you come over tomorrow.

You're at Sam's door probably much earlier than they really wanted you to be there, but it doesn't matter because you cried all night and didn't sleep and now you look puffy and red and when they see that they'll understand. Its just as bad as you imagined, too, which makes everything twist on the inside like you're juicing it. Sam's on her back in bed with a black eye, a cast on her right arm, and a jumble of pill bottles on the nightstand next to her. You pull her into a hard, fast hug like she's not injured, but she doesn't even say ow.

"What happened?" You choke out as you grasp Sam's hand, dropping into a chair placed next to her bed.

"I would've called you sooner," she starts off, her voice harsh and rusty like she hasn't used it in awhile. "But I just got out of the hospital yesterday and they would only let family visit me."

"Why were you in the hospital?" You ask as casually as possible, but your words are still rushed and anxious.

"Mostly because of the fall, I think." She responds, shrugging her slim shoulders and wincing.

"What fall?" You cry, squeezing her fingers a little too tightly in your hand.

She brushes stray blonde strands out of her face with her undamaged left hand and tilts her head more comfortably against her pillow. "Didn't my mom tell you what happened?"

It turns out Sam is even more reckless than you originally thought. After downing an ungodly amount of Ecstasy and most of a bottle of vodka, she decided it was a good idea to play on the roof of our school. Only she had a seizure, and fell off, down three floors, and hit the cement hard. The beginning of her weeklong stay in the hospital was for the pumping of her stomach and treating her outward wounds. Only, she never stopped seizing. So the rest of it was spent stabilizing her and checking her brainwaves and getting her on medication, i.e., the half a dozen bottles next to her bed.

"I only take two of them twice a day. The others were temporary." Sam tells you like you had asked her what she wanted for dinner. You haven't been able to get the nonplussed expression off your face since she began her story. And now that she's finished it, you aren't really sure if you want to hold her or beat the shit out of her.

And actually, the worst part is you didn't think she would do any of those things. You remember a year and a half ago when you decided to get drunk together and Sam puked all the next morning, declaring she would never drink again. Then there was that party at Wendy's house where she snorted a whole bunch of some white powder that was never really classified to you and you had to spend all night and the next day taking care of her as she went back and forth between reckless and plain out suicidal. And she promised you, _promised_ you she wasn't ever going to do drugs again because it hurt you so much. So while you stand there, staring down at your blonde best friend, it hurts more than a little.

She opens up to you then, for the first time it seems like, in all of her broken, exhausted, lost feelings, on how much she's been hiding from you. You want to cry, you want to slap her, and part of you wants to slip out of your chair and break right there with her. She tells you about the streak of abusive boyfriends her mom had gone through over the last year and how many people she's had to fight off. She tells you of the fairly extensive alcohol and drug use she's been participating in since she tried them with you and how much they eased the pain for a few hours. She tells you that she loves you, but she knew this was not something she could share, even within the confines of your friendship because she was scared of losing you.

You're still crying when you leave her house a few hours later. Part of you always elevated her so high up because, even though she was often pulled to committing crimes and the like, she wasn't like other bad girls. She didn't go off and get high to be happy, she didn't drink to make up for the joy she didn't have, only she did and she lied to you about it and you're such an idiot.

You don't see Sam much over the next two weeks as she recovers from her injuries and adjusts to the seizure medication. But one day, she shows up and there's no longer a cast encasing her right arm and the bruise surrounding her eye is gone and she just seems happier. She corners you at your locker and kind of forces you into letting her come over after school, not realizing just how much you've missed her. You haven't invited her over personally because she isn't Sam anymore. She isn't the girl you spent hours batting a balloon around with in the iCarly studio, talking about nothing in particular. She isn't even the girl who stole a twenty out of your purse a couple weeks before she went missing from your life. There's something broken and twisted about her now that may not be there physically for everyone to see, but you see it and it eats at you.

You want your best friend back, but even as Sam sits on your couch devouring your ham, it doesn't seem possible. Something changed that morning she told you about those hidden parts of herself and you can't seem to change it back. In fact, it's a few months before Sam even notices that things are off, but she doesn't really say anything about it, either. She simply withdraws and suddenly you're alone and you never realized how much you can't stand being alone before. You pace back and forth in your bedroom virtually all day, waiting, wanting desperately for something to come up, but it doesn't. She doesn't text you, call you, nothing. And somehow a month goes by with no contact and then she sends you a text at 3:46 in the morning. You stare at it with blurry eyes, sleep still filling the cavities of your brain, and it takes a while to register just what the text says and how deep it is.

_I've always liked you, you know, in an off kind of way._

It's so explicit and yet so limited in its content, but you know exactly what she's saying and your heart pounds so hard throughout your whole body. You scrape at your eyes over and over, telling yourself maybe she just sent it to you by accident, these words were really meant for somebody else, but when you text a question mark back to her, she just sends you the same text again. Your fingers shake as you do the only thing that's seemed rational in months: you call her.

"Hey… cupcake." Her voice is low and raspy, and you can just picture her sprawled across her bedroom floor, looking at the foot of her bed where you carved pictures into the wood when you were twelve.

You climb out of bed and head over to your bedroom door to flick on the light, but something makes you want to stay in the darkness, so you flip back around and curl yourself into a ball to sit on the floor leaning heavily into your bed. "Hi… Sam." You dig your teeth into your lip as she exhales loudly on the other end. "Its almost four in the morning."

She chuckles softly and you picture her tracing the carvings with the tip of her finger. "Yeah, sorry. Just finally convinced myself to tell you, so it had to be now."

"What are you doing up at four in the morning?" You ask to avoid responding.

She sighs a second time. "Kept seizing, so the doctor switched my meds. Now I'm up pretty much up all night and sleep most of the day- one of those wonderful side effects."

"What are you going to do when school starts?"

"Skip, I guess."

"Sam."

"I could sleep at school."

"Oh, so the same thing as last year, then?"

She chuckles softly over the line and your heart slows a little and you relax into the side of your bed. "What happened to us?" She asks and you want to tell her about all of the pain she's caused you and how hurt you feel that she didn't trust you and how different she's become, but you can't. Because she's still Sam somewhere deep inside and you want to hold onto that little bit with every ounce of strength you have.

"I don't know." You finally mutter breathlessly. "You stopped coming over."

Her breath catches for a moment before she mumbles, "you stopped wanting me to."

Its true, and as much as you want to tell her it isn't, she knows it is. Tears hit you full force, which is weird because you didn't have the slightest urge to cry even a second ago. "You changed." You say in a low, cracked voice.

"I'm still Sam." She tells you, pain etched into her tone because ever since you met, she hurts when you hurt and you know it. "Carls…"

"Maybe we could try again?" You suggest, not sure if you want her to agree or not.

"Yeah…" A rustling sound echoes over the line. She's probably sitting up, you figure. "Are you going to respond to my text?"

"What do you mean?"

She exhales. "I can't say it over the phone." She says flat out.

"Did you want to text your explanation to me?"

"No," She laughs. "Want to meet me?"

"Its four o' clock in the morning." You tell her, but your voice lacks all of the conviction it would have had a few months ago because this is Sam and if she wants to see you, you want to be there.

"I know."

"I look like shit." You tell her because you aren't really looking for an excuse.

"I doubt it. You always look pretty, even when you first wake up." You're both silent for a long moment as you contemplate her words. Finally she adds, "Meet me at Starbucks. I know you hate their coffee, but they're always open."

"It'll take me a few minutes to get dressed and stuff."

"I'll wait."

You've never dressed faster in your life, shoving your slim legs into the yellow shorts you wore the day before and yanking a black t-shirt roughly over your head. You pause at the mirror for a long moment to brush your hair out, swipe some gloss over your lips and try to convince yourself you look pretty. At the front door, you slip your feet into a pair of converse, lock the door, and walk as fast as you can to Starbucks. The place is empty, save the cashier leaning heavily on the counter with her eyes shut, and Sam. She's sitting right next to the window, curling a lock of blonde hair around her finger with a cup of coffee sitting in front of her. She looks up when you walk in.

"Hi," she greets and smiles in an unsure kind of way.

You want to hug her, kiss her, slap her, do something more drastic than simply dropping into the seat across from her, but that's all you do and it seems okay because she's looking at you like that's all she expected.

"Hi."

"So…" She says, leaning forward, shoving aside what you realize now is an empty cup of coffee.

"So…" You repeat, pulling the cup to you and plucking at its edges. "I'm here."

"You are." She acknowledges, nodding. Her blue eyes are steady on the cup you're slowly shredding. "Thanks for meeting me."

You pause in your cup-torture to look at her. It isn't like Sam to use words like 'thanks'. "Why wouldn't I?"

She shrugs. "Well, maybe because of what happened four months ago. Maybe because we haven't talked in a month. I don't know, take your pick."

You nod, wishing you had something to say. Wishing you had turned off the sound on your phone so you hadn't awoken when she texted you. Wishing the whole last year never happened. "I get it."

"I'm thinking we should spend the day together." She says, keeping her eyes focused on anything but your face. "We could do the tourist thing: go to the Space Needle, the Market, and traipse up and down the pier."

You nod and hope your making the right decision because it feels like every other one that's been made this year has been wrong. Sam buys you a cup of coffee and leads the way out of Starbucks. Somewhere on the way to the pier, her fingers touch your hands so many times that she decides to just leave them there and links her fingers with yours. You want to blush, you want to pull away, you want to reject her, but you don't. You can't.

"You want to talk about your text?" You whisper to Sam as you watch the sun rise from the pier and its hitting you how beautiful Seattle can be and how beautiful Sam is with the sun glittering in her hair and making it shine so intensely like she's ethereal.

Sam shakes her head, her blue eyes sparkling with depths you know you've never explored. "Not right now. I've got you until midnight, I think I'm going to put it off for as long as possible."

You and Sam wander up and down the pier until stores begin opening and then you peruse those for a while until you are sure Pike Place is in full swing. You've loved Pike Place since you were a little girl, and you especially love holding Sam's hand so as not to be separated as you go from table to table, looking at the jewelry and clothing, listening to the random street musician, trying miniature donuts for two bucks a dozen. You talk and laugh and get lost in the noise and controlled chaos of the market, letting everything sweep you away. You join the tourists at the fish part of the market and immerse yourself in their excitement as they watch large fish zoom through the air. You're just as impressed, but you hide it since you are a resident. Sam doesn't, though. She joins in with them, clapping and whistling, and you have to talk her out of buying a large Alaskan salmon just so she can try it herself.

Sam forces you on the Monorail a little after five to head over to the Space Needle. You've never liked the monorail since it feels frail and its like you're in one of those _Final Destination_ movies where every turn is your last, but its not and Sam holds your hand tightly in hers for added comfort. You get off at the Space Needle and stare up at it, wondering whether you really want to go so high up because you and heights don't really get along so great, but Sam offers to pay your fifteen bucks on top of her own and drags you in. At the top she admits that she was just as nervous, but for some reason, she feels some kind of weird urge to be a superhero in your eyes and couldn't really show it. You stay up for awhile, eating dinner in the café and trying to think the food is much better than it actually is because it means three-quarters of your day with Sam is over and it kind of feels like the last day you'll get to spend with her like this, and you really want it to last. She pulls a small container from her pocket when she finishes eating and pops two pills into the back of her mouth and drains them down. Some part of you is blocking out all that has happened the last four months and it feels like you're fifteen again and she's still Sam and everything is okay, but the pills are just another reminder of everything that's happened.

You feel a lot more comfortable for about ten seconds when your feet are back on earth until Sam forcing you back into the monorail and you zip back over the vibes of the city, not really too high up but looks can be deceiving, and you get back to the Market. You go full circle, heading back to the pier and strolling along it, Sam telling you funny stories of the time her mom got in a fight with one of the hobos that live along the strip or the time she somehow ended up dressed up as Santa Claus, running down the street barefoot with the cops chasing her, and you laugh like you have nothing holding you back.

The sun sets and you sit watching it fall back over the water like a reverse vision of the morning and Sam's watching you like she's expecting you to do or say something miraculous, but you've got nothing. Part of you wants to cry all over again. You want to beg her forgiveness for abandoning her in her time of need because you should've been there no matter how much pain you were in, but you know she doesn't want you to mention it. There's something in her demeanor, in every cell of her body, exuding her desire to keep the past the past, but its really all you've thought about all day.

"Its eleven, maybe I should walk you home…?" Sam mutters out of the corner of her mouth, but she's already leading the way, pulling you along gently.

"You think maybe you'll sleep tonight since you stayed up all day?" You ask to avoid an awkward silence.

She shrugs. "Maybe. Hopefully."

You want to ask if she wants to spend the night, but you're pretty sure she'll say no. You don't know why, but you are. "Hmm."

"It kind of feels like something big is ending." She admits, looking away from you, pretending to examine a streetlight, bathing you in yellow light.

You nod because you don't know what it is, but you feel it too. "Yeah."

She stops in front of Bushwell Plaza, staring up at it like she isn't sure if she has the right to go up or not, but you didn't ask her up, so maybe she doesn't have to think about it.

"I'm off drugs…" She tells you abruptly. "And alcohol. Since I was in the hospital. None."

You bob your head, your eyes wide at this unexpected outburst. "Okay."

"I just wanted you to know, cuz I thought maybe that was the reason you didn't want to see me is you thought I was still doing that stuff, and I'm not." She tells you, her eyes blazing into yours and you can't look away.

"I believe you."

You stare into her eyes for several minutes before she looks away, blinking quickly. "That wasn't it." She declares.

"Well, not exactly, but it wasn't _not_ it." You say, gripping her shoulder.

She digs her teeth into her lip, her eyes flicking up to your building once more. "I don't know how to fix us." She says and it's so innocent and so honest you want to tell her everything's okay and everything's back to normal now, but you both know its not, so why would she believe you?

"You can't." You tell her instead, and she looks back into your eyes, searching for that one last ounce of hope. "We weren't broken, we ended." You say with a shrug and the tears start then. "But we can start over."

She looks angry, which surprises you, glaring and rolling her eyes as she pulls her hand out of yours and turns away with a loud exhale. "No, Carly we're broken. And we can't start over. It sounds easy, doesn't it? Start afresh? Begin anew? Nice, happy phrases. Nothing ends. We have to fix our relationship, not replace it."

You frown at her. "What if I don't want to fix it?"

"Than why would you have rushed out at four o' clock this morning to meet me?"

You drop to the ground, curling your knees into your chest and wrapping your arms around them. "How are we supposed to fix us?"

Sam kneels in front of you, lifting you chin to look at you and wiping away your tears with her thumb. "Time and effort. My therapists always suggest that for fixing things."

You smiley bleakly up at her through your tears. "Had you wanted to make me cry before you told me what your text meant?"

She shakes her head. "Uh, no. Can't say that was part of the plan. Look, Carly," she pulls you to her, wrapping her arms around you, "everything sucks when you're not there. I realized that this last month. I need you around, whether it keeps me out of trouble or not."

"Clearly not."

"Four months ago, let's just say that was not a moment of glory for me. Of all the things I've done, I've never been so ashamed as I was when you were sitting next to my bed and I was telling you what happened. It was like confessing my sins." Sam says, stroking your hair. "I messed up, kid. And my time machine stopped working, so I have to deal with everything, which you know I hate cuz that means effort."

You smile, fighting back the good feelings blossoming in your chest. "I remember."

"Please, Carls. You're my best friend. Let me earn back my place as yours."

You wake up the next morning and things feel different, things are different, and you couldn't explain it to Spencer when he asked you why you were so smiley because its something you just know, like your name or your phone number. Freddie comes over after lunch and he asks the same questions Spencer did with a slightly different tone and wording and you're no better at telling him what's going on, but he picks out of that Sam is back in your life and immediately brings up the idea of iCarly, which you unexpectedly quit when Sam disappeared four months ago. You tell him you'll discuss it with Sam. He goes home for dinner looking a little disappointed.

You hear from Sam again at midnight. She texts you first to find out if you're awake and then calls you when you hurriedly send back a reply. In truth, you were really hoping she'd call you and you'd talk again and it kind of felt like nightly talks could be your thing for a while since you usually stay up fairly late and she's still having side effects. It feels good to have a thing with her since she used to be your best friend and you had so many things like inside jokes or certain foods you always ate together. But now, this is all you have.

"I was going to text you during normal awake hours, but I slept all day." She tells you honestly as soon as you answer the phone. "So I didn't."

"Yeah, I figured you did." You say, lying flat on the plush carpet of your bedroom floor. You had Spencer draw random pictures on your ceiling earlier because you had a feeling you would be spending quite a bit of time staring up at it.

"So…" Sam says nervously. "What did you do all day?"

"Nothing." You respond quickly. "Spent the morning with Spencer, Freddie came over for the afternoon. After dinner, Spencer drew pictures on my ceiling while I drew names from a hat of what he should draw."

"Did he draw a pickle?"

"Yeah, actually, he did."

"Awesome."

You sit in silence for a while, listening to her breathe on the other end of the line. You never used to have this problem. Conversation, banter, whatever, it all just flowed. "I miss you." You say abruptly, surprising yourself.

"Really? I just saw you yesterday. Or, I guess its now the day before yesterday."

"No, I mean, I miss this. I miss us. I miss just talking to you or hanging out with you." You say, toying with a single strand of carpet between your fingers.

"Uh huh." She sighs. "Is your front door unlocked?"

"What?" You sit up. "Pretty sure it's locked, Spencer usually locks it. Why?"

"Nothing, just means I gotta work a pin outta my hair." She makes a small gasp of pain. "Hold tight for a sec."

You shove up to standing and strain your ears for noise, but you hear nothing. "Sam? Are you breaking into my loft?"

"That's such a nasty way to put it. I like to think of it as entry without invitation. Sounds a lot less illegal." You fight the grin working its way onto your face as you step over to your door and pull it open, which causes Sam to walk right into you and you both fall back onto your floor.

She laughs, loud in your ear, scraping a hand up to cover it because Spencer is sleeping and when she pulls back to stare down at you with her intense azure eyes, you laugh too. Her blonde curls swirl around her as she sits back on her heels to allow you to sit up, still covering her mouth as she chortles behind her fingers.

"What have I told you about breaking into my loft?" You demand, trying to force venom into your voice that is just not there.

"Its illegal and wrong." Sam recites.

"Good girl."

Its like you've stepped back in time to the great moments of the recent past when there wasn't such an abundance of pain and anger. And for that moment, its great, everything is, and you're happy and she's happy. You sit there and smile at each other until the feeling has passed and there's nothing you can do to get it back. Then she stands, stretching a hand down to help you up, and you unconsciously lead the way over to your bed. Neither of you climb onto it, but choose to lean up against it with your heads back to ogle the drawings.

"He really did draw a pickle." Sam says as if she hadn't believed you.

You nod, drawing your knees in close and resting your chin on them. "Thanks for coming." You say after a long moment and lift your eyes to meet hers and she's already looking back at you and all she does in response is nod.

Some part of you was hoping, even expecting her to show up when she called you because that was just such a Sam thing to do. Everything in you is happy she did. Everything in you is buzzing for the next three hours as you lie there on your floor, looking at Spencer's drawing, talking here and there about whatever and it feels so good that you can't even put it in words. After a while, you can't keep your eyes open, though, so you climb up onto the bed and drift off while she plays with your hair.

Sam's not there when you wake up at noon, not that you expected her to be. And actually, you didn't really want her to be. It's nice having her back in your life, comforting, _exciting_ even. But those things that are really going to bring her back as your best friend, those things you still aren't talking about. You're still avoiding addressing the real issues. You want to ask her how the drugs and alcohol became such a part of her life; you're searching your brain for how you didn't notice. Maybe you didn't want to see. You want to ask her about all the pain and suffering of her home life because she should have told you. When did you become so untrustworthy to her? How did everything crumble?

Its two days later when your phone buzzes in your clenched grip a little after one. You were in bed, drifting, but not quite asleep, and you jolt back into the physical world as soon as it happens. You don't even bother to read her text and send her a blank one back as a reply. She calls you back almost immediately.

"Are you standing outside my loft again?" You ask when you accept her call.

She chuckles. "Sorry, but no. My mom's passed out drunk on the couch and I don't want her to drowned if she throws up again."

"Oh." Its difficult to shove down the disappointment flooding up into your veins.

"Carly," she starts and you hear her shift, readjusting herself, "it's probably too early to bring this up, but we kind of need to have a serious talk."

"Its kind of weird for you to be the one suggesting we have a serious talk." You say, trying to keep a lightness to the conversation that you know is about to end.

"Everything crashed and burned four months ago, I think we can both agree on that, but things weren't okay before then." She says softly, almost a whisper. "Things hadn't been okay in a long time."

"I thought they were!" You protest, but there is very little fight in your voice. Your best friend was on drugs and you never noticed. She was suffering and not a single thought passed through your brain that it was even a possibility.

She exhales, shifting again. "No, they weren't. And you know they weren't."

"Okay, so maybe things weren't perfect, but they weren't bad."

"They were terrible." Sam declares and you don't really have the will to argue. "I couldn't talk to you." She admits and her voice gains a soft, very girly, very unlike Sam quality to it. Vulnerable. "And its not just you, a lot of people do it. When their life is going good, they assume everyone else's is too."

"You could have told me."

"No, I couldn't. You would have been angry, you would have scolded me like a child, but I'm not, Carly! I'm not a little kid! I'm older than you! I needed a friend, not a second mother, and when I looked around for that friend to use as a confidante, I didn't see one."

Your eyes burn, but you fight the urge with everything you've got. "Sam…"

"I'm not making excuses. Most of the things I've done, I'm not ashamed of in the least. I did them for fun and I had fun. Worth it. This last year, I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of. The destruction of us, though, it wasn't just me." She grunts loudly into the phone and then let's out a loud gasp.

You stare at the phone for a moment before putting it back against your ear. "Sam, what are you doing?"

"Rearranging my room." She answers honestly.

"Could you, uh, try not to move around heavy objects during our 'serious' conversation?" You snap.

"See? That's what I'm talking about!" She points out. "It doesn't bother me most of the time, but you treat me like a child that's put their hands in the pie."

"Well, that's how you act a lot of the time!" You exclaim in a whisper. "I can't help it! Some part of me wants so badly to take care of you and part of that is making you see wrong since you can't really see it yourself."

"I see what's wrong!" She hisses back. "I also see what hurts, and there's a big difference between the two."

"What do you mean?"

"You remember all the pranks we pulled on Lewbert? Those were wrong. You remember when I told the world Freddie's never been kissed? That hurt. And which one did I make up for?"

"Yeah, by kissing him!"

"That's not the point!" Sam sighs like you don't understand her. "I may not always get wrong, but I get pain. If I'm hurting someone, I don't mind you letting me know. But scolding me for things that are minor? That's what we have guardians for."

"Okay, okay." You give, snatching the glass of water off your nightstand and downing half of it. "I promise to stop trying to control you like I'm your parent or something, but in return, you have to stop making me worry about you so much."

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? Sam, I'm always worrying about you! About where you are, what you are doing. If you're hurt or in prison. I never know! And then I find out you spend a portion of your time out getting high or drunk."

"I'm not doing that anymore!" Sam says loudly.

"But how do I know that? I'm not with you all the time." You say in a low voice.

"Well," she exhales into the phone, "you'll just have to trust me on that. You'll just have to trust that I'm making good decisions."

"But you're notorious for your bad decision making!" You all but yell into the phone, and then you remember the sleeping Spencer downstairs and drop your tone back down. "If you could just like, drop me a line or something before you go to bed letting me know you're okay or something…"

"That sounds a lot like a leash."

"Well, I really don't trust you right now."

You sit in silence for several long moments now that's you've voiced the heart of your problem. You picture Sam sitting on her bed, her legs crossed, staring out her window as she thinks over your words.

"I don't know how to fix that."

You smile sadly, even though she can't see you. "Neither do I." You hang up the phone and cry yourself to sleep.

You spend all day wracked with nervous excitement to talk to her again because, even though you ended on a low note, you feel like you really made some progress on the whole repairing your relationship thing. Only, she doesn't call you that night. Or the next. Two full days pass and you don't hear from her at all and it could be four months ago all over again as you pace your brother's loft at midnight, this time up in your room, every night, waiting for her to call and ease your anxiety. It does occur to you that you could call her, but you don't want to seem needy and, on top of that, if somehow she has managed to regain a normal sleep schedule and get rid of the side effects from her drugs, you don't want to interfere. After three nights, though, you can't take it. You're dressed in your lucky pajamas, the sun and moon ones with a yellow tank top, and as soon as it hits midnight, you are poised to call.

Nervous energy ricochets around your cells as you listen to it ring on her end and, when she finally picks up, your stomach drops out. "Sam." Is all she says, as if running a business and she was answering to take an order.

"Its me." You whisper, plopping down on your bed and sitting on your free hand to try and relax by ceasing any fidgeting.

"Oh, hey," she responds softly and just hearing her voice again makes a grin form on your face. "Sorry I haven't called you the last few days."

"Its okay, the whole leash thing, I get you." You say at hyper speed, like you're running an auction.

She chuckles. "Uh, no, not really. Remember how I said I had to stay home so my mom didn't drowned in her own puke? Well, I just thought she was drunk, but she wasn't- she was actually sick. Really sick. So the last few nights I've been taking over her shift at The Milky Way."

"Oh, that's really… thoughtful of you." You say, standing again and beginning to pace. "Is she still sick?"

"Nope, all better." Sam says cheerfully. "I nursed her back to health like she never did for me."

"Right." You dig your teeth into your lip for a moment. "So what are you doing now?"

"Eating an orange."

"So you have time?"

"Yeah, but I'm not sure where to continue from where we left off even though I had a few days to think about it."

"Honestly? Neither do I." You stare at your toes encased in yellow polka dotted socks and think about how Sam has to where two different colored socks to bed because she thinks its lucky. "I think we should go on a date." You say abruptly and frown at your own words.

"A date?" Sam repeats in disbelief.

"Yeah, go to a movie or something. Do something normal instead of argue over the phone at midnight."

"I can come to your loft and we can argue in person." Sam says and you're smiling and your heart is racing.

"Come over, then."

"Already on my way, cupcake." She says and hangs up on you.

You wrap a robe around your body to hide the fact you aren't wearing a bra, not like it matters since Sam has seen you naked at least three times since the New Year and its only August. You and her just have never had the physical and personal boundaries most people do, so after a few minutes in the robe, you can't take the heat and figure its nothing new to her anyway. She shows up at ten to one with a backpack in tow and an apple in her mouth.

"Hope you don't mind," She tries to say around the apple as she shrugs off her backpack before removing it from her mouth. "I brought some clothes and my pills so I don't have to leave first thing in the morning."

You hug her because you've never loved that she tends to invite herself over without asking you or telling you at all more. Her body tenses at first, but then she relaxes and wraps her arms around you, sneaking a bite of her apple off to the side.

"You haven't spent the night in a long time," You whisper in her ear. "You remember which side of the bed is yours?"

"I'll never forget." She mumbles as you pull back, dragging some of her long blonde locks forward with you.

"So, uh…" You start, blushing suddenly as you replay your sudden display of affection in your head. "I think we left off with me not trusting you."

Sam nods, slipping out of her hoodie and tossing it unceremoniously onto the floor. "I'm not really sure where we move to from there. Do we just start somewhere else, because that isn't going to be solved through midnight phone calls."

You sit down cross-legged on the floor and she sits down across from you, mimicking your pose, which you wish she wasn't because that means you have to look at her and stare into the azure eyes you love so much, but have caused so much of this. "I guess we start somewhere new." You mumble a little breathlessly, unable to break away from her gaze. "Maybe you should tell me everything's that happened this last year."

She does. She spills it all out like she had written it down for a public speech project and this was some kind of rehearsal for when she took to the podium. She starts back at the very beginning, the first time of everything, and the finale, when she realized the connection was broken like some kind of magic spell had ended and your relationship had fallen, slack-jawed onto the ground. You stare at her the whole time with a sort of disturbed awe kind of expression twitching your facial muscles, and when she finishes, you sit in silence for several minutes as you try to absorb everything. Sam smiles when she finishes, at several places in her tale she had tried to insert humor, but it falters fairly quickly.

"Sam…" Is all you can manage to say as she looks over at you, trying to hide the broken expression you are realizing she wore for long time without your notice.

She shakes her head, as if that clears the air. "Don't… Its not a big deal, its over now."

You crawl over to her on your knees and wrap your arms around her and, since she can't cry, you do it for her. She holds onto you so tight you feel everything inside of you squeeze together and breathing becomes harder and then she releases you and lets you fall back on your butt to continue forward.

You go to bed at a little after three and sleep until noon. You wake up to the sun filtering in through the curtains and Sam sprawled across your bed, buried in sheets and blankets and golden curls, and you slip out from under it all, watching it glitter in the sun, and wishing for a camera so you could take a picture. How could someone so broken, so hurt, so mischievous look so angelic? You shower and dress quickly, slipping into the quietest clothes you own, smiling over it because you've never picked out an outfit before in consideration of the noise it would make, and head downstairs. Spencer's awake, sitting on a stool in the living room with a giant elephant, the kind that come off of merry-go-rounds, sitting in front of him.

"Sam's shoes are by the door." He states, glancing over at you as you fix yourself a bowl of cereal.

You nod. "She's sleeping."

"When did she get here?"

"Around one this morning."

He shakes his head, examining the tongue of the elephant a little more closely. "Perfect time for a friendly visit."

"I told her to come."

"My own sister… lost to the draw of the night."

"Spencer."

"Fleeing into the darkness that is slowly consuming her soul."

"Spencer, really."

"Fascinated by the magic and-"

"Its too early for that, Spencer!" You exclaim at him and he shuts up.

"Its noon." He tells you after a long pause of silence.

You nod. "Yeah, I went to sleep at three."

Sam joins you a little after four in the afternoon. You're downstairs, sitting on the couch with your legs propped up, watching Seattle Beat with Freddie. Freddie looks startled to see her, but makes the right decision not to say anything by the look on your face. She drops into the seat next to you, drains your glass of iced tea, then falls back and rests her head on your shoulder.

"When's breakfast?" She whines into your ear.

"In about sixteen hours." You tell her, glancing at the clock as she groans. "But dinner's in about two, I think you'll have better luck with that."

She nods, keeping her eyes closed. "Okay." She mutters against the skin of your neck and you shiver all the way down to your toes. "What time is it?" She breathes and your eyes roll shut, tingles dipping into all of those places that have never been touched, but you're realizing really need to be.

"Almost four-thirty." You tell her, trying to hold your attention on the television.

Her eyes pop open and you know it because her eyelashes scrape against your skin and that makes your body have more funny, stupid reactions to your friend. Who's a girl. Female. And you aren't attracted to females. "I should go get dressed." She mumbles and heads back upstairs, walking like she's half dead.

Freddie starts up as soon as he hears your bedroom door close. "What is she doing here? I thought you were only have late-night conversations!"

"Well!" You start, wanting to defend everything that's been passing between you and Sam lately, but you aren't really sure what _that _is, so how are you supposed to defend it? "She comes over sometimes. Actually, this is only the second time. And she ended up staying the night."

He shrugs, raising and lowering his eyebrows in fast succession. "You know how I feel about her, but I know you love her a lot more than you'll ever love me, so I guess this is a good thing, and I should feel happy for you."

You smile. "Freddie."

"What? It's the truth. "He shrugs again. "I'm not really sure what kind of relationship you guys have, but I'm pretty sure it's worth fighting for. I've never seen you more depressed than this last month you spent without her in your life at all."

You half smile, half frown at him. "Did you just give me your blessing?"

He chuckles uncertainly. "Yeah, I guess I kind of did."

"You know Sam and I aren't… _romantically_ involved, right?" You say, your cheeks flushed.

"You like bad boys, Carly. Why do you think that is?" Freddie responds passionately.

"Because they're hot?" You suggest.

"Because you see a bit of Sam in them." Freddie supplies. "And haven't you heard Sam's dream? It always comes up when you start dating someone. A monster steals her soup. I.e., you're her soup. Get it?"

"I'm soup?"

He rolls his eyes. "Never mind. Someday, hopefully, you guys will catch on." He stands then, shaking his head at you. "Still hoping for second husband, though." He raises crossed fingers for you to see, then heads out of the apartment.

Sam comes back down fully dressed after a while and pulls together a large meal you know won't spoil her appetite for whatever Spencer cooks, eating it over a ten-minute period while she finishes off Seattle Beat with you. And even though she's sitting right next to you, she pulls out her phone and moments later yours buzzes in your pocket. You eyeball her as you pull it out, flip it open, and read over the text she just sent you.

_I've always liked you, you know, in an off kind of way._

You smile, closing your phone and stuffing it back into your pocket. "Are you finally going to reveal the great mystery behind your text?"

She shakes her head, pushing her plate into your hands because she knows you'll have to get up and put it in the sink and she's much to lazy to take care of it herself. You sigh, standing, and plop the plate in the sink, grabbing a couple Peppy Colas from the refrigerator.

"I think you should just tell me. Holding stuff in isn't good for you." You tell her.

She just smiles at you and shakes her head. "Not yet."

"Maybe just tell me what you me by 'in an off kind of way', then because the rest kind of speaks for itself." You suggest, handing her a Peppy Cola and cracking yours open.

Again she shakes her head. "I'll tell you when our relationship is stabilized."

"That's jank." You say, but she doesn't even bother responding this time as she flips through the channels in search of a new show.

Even though she's already at your loft, you still don't start up until midnight like it's your designated therapy session time or something. When midnight does finally roll around, though, you're back leaning against your bed, Sam stretched out on the floor with her head in your lap.

You comb your fingers through Sam's hair, twisting every curl and wishing your hair was as soft. "Freddie said something weird today."

"As all nubs do."

You yank a strand of her hair and she glares at you. "He said that I go after bad boys because I see a bit of you in them, and that the dream you have where a monster is stealing your soup only comes around when I'm dating someone because I'm your soup."

She smirks at you, reaching a finger up and jabbing it into your chin. "Sounds like something one of my therapists would say."

"So?"

"So, you can find hidden meaning in anything if you're looking for it." Her hand turns soft and she drags the back of it gently over your cheek. "Freddie's looking for a reason why you won't choose him, so he decides the reason couldn't possibly be him, so it has to be you. You because you're really just looking for me in guy form and he is definitely not me in guy form. I'd be really hot if I were a dude."

You smile. "You're really hot in girl form." You say earnestly and she just grins at you and smacks her hand gently against your cheek.

"I know." She mutters. "Unfortunately, you are one of the few who appreciate this since its kind of hard for other people to see what a loveable person I am."

"Maybe Freddie's right, though." You shrug. "Maybe I do date bad boys because they remind me of you."

"Well, of course you do!" Sam's exclaims in a loud whisper. "Its kind of a quality you'd have to be attracted to or we would never have been friends at all."

You shrug, holding her hand against your cheek just to feel her skin against yours. "Am I your soup?"

"No chizz." She rolls her eyes at you. "I figured that out a long time ago."

"So… Freddie was right."

"Freddie's a nub."

"A nub who's right."

"Whatev."

This time when you curl up in your bed at a quarter to four, Sam goes with you and wraps her arms around you waist. You go to ask if she's going to sleep now and maybe she should take her pills before she conks out, but your eyes slide shut with her added comfort encircling you and your out before you can open your mouth.

You wake up just after eleven, which sucks because it means you only got six hours of sleep and you really like somewhere around ten. When you wake up at eleven, Sam's lying on top of you and you aren't really sure how she got there, but you definitely aren't sure how you're going to get out from under her without waking her up. You wrap your arms around her, remembering from a movie you can no longer name some technique about hugging and rolling and maybe that'll work so maybe you should try it. Sam's face is in the crook of your neck and her slow, even breaths are sending waves through your body, and parts of her body are crushing into parts of your body and your body is enjoying this little factoid way too much. She's lighter than you realized. You frown, dropping your arms from around her waist and begin a search through gentle pokes of different section of Sam. She's thinner than you remember. Suddenly you're hugging her for and entirely different reason because it seems like your fault. And you don't stop until you realize you were squeezing a little to hard because Sam is awake and trying to pry your arms from around her crushing rib cage.

"Carly, Carly," She's pleading, "Carly, its okay. You can let go."

When you finally do, she straddles your lap and curls an arm around your waist and holds your face against hers with her other hand. You want to cry, you want to fall to pieces right then and there, but with Sam holding you so tightly against her, with her whispering encouraging words in your ear, which aren't all that encouraging, just random words like butternut squash or Chihuahua because Sam isn't really sure what to whisper in this kind of situation, you hold together. You smile, and even giggle a little, but you don't break.

"What was that about?" Sam asks when you pull back and grin at her.

You shrug. "I don't know. I woke up and you were sleeping on top of me and I was thinking about how much lighter you are, and then I started poking you and I realized how much thinner you are, and then I don't know. I felt like it was my fault for some reason."

She smiles kindly at you and it's probably a smile that only your eyes have ever seen. "I haven't gotten lighter or thinner. I have gotten taller, though, did you notice? We're like the same height now and you were always taller than me."

You nod. "I noticed." And it feels like there's a deeper hidden meaning in your words, and Sam's expression says she thought so too, but you brush it off by scooting her off your lap and standing. "Are you going to go back to sleep?"

"Nah," She says, following you to the door. "I'm hungry."

Sam leaves after you feed her, telling you she'll call you, but not naming a specific time. You sit on the couch long after she leaves, staring at the door, knowing your relationship is moving forward, but not entirely sure what, exactly, its progressing into. She doesn't call you that night and you spend a few hours pacing up and down your room with your phone in your hand waiting for it. Although, you should have known she wouldn't call since she only left a few hours earlier. But the next night, your worries are short-circuited as she calls at a little before eleven.

"A little early, isn't it?" You answer with, smiling up at your ceiling. You were reading in wait for midnight, but you set your book aside immediately, forgetting where you left off.

"I went to my neurologist today and he switched my meds again. He said its not good for me to stay up all night." She tells you and you hear the springs in her mattress condense as she sits down on her bed.

"Shouldn't you go to bed then?"

"I slept all day, how can I go to bed now?"

"Then how are you going to switch your sleeping schedule?"

"I was thinking we could go shopping tomorrow, see a movie. I'll buy you dinner." Sam offers and you know you'll end up paying, but you always find it really sweet when she offers.

You grin. "I don't get up before noon, though."

"Well, maybe you could get up at seven with me and we'll compete to see who can drink the most cups of coffee before noon."

"And why would I do that?"

"You know why."

You must be retarded or something because at seven o' clock on the dot the next morning, your up and in the shower, a cold one to fight sleep, screaming. Screaming because it seems to actually help you wake up a bit. Screaming, and Spencer is pounding on the door trying to out-scream you so he can find out why the hell anyone when scream in a cold shower at seven o' clock in the morning. Sam's already over when you come downstairs, on her third cup of coffee, and polishing off a four-egg breakfast. She's dressed simply in a blue tank top covered in stars and plaid board shorts. She grins up at you as you come down the stairs.

"Morning, cupcake. The whole building's awake since you had to go and sing in the shower." She tells you, dusting her hands over the plate and hopping to her feet.

You blush. "I wasn't singing."

"Try explaining that to Freddie's mom. She just left and she was angrier than I've ever seen her. Guess someone didn't get her recommended 8 to 10 hours."

"I'm not sure Ms. Benson forces herself to the same guidelines she shoves on Freddie."

"I was talking about Freddie." She smiles brightly at you for a moment. "So where's Spencer?"

"Oh, well, he's not really capable of being up before eight, so he's passed out next to my bathroom door." You shrug, pouring a bowl of cereal.

"Want me to carry him back to his bed?"

"Would you?"

It hits you later, after you've spent the day shopping with Sam, saw a ridiculous movie about aliens, and paid for her dinner, how you can think of nothing but her when you're in her company.

As the days pass, things fall back into place. It becomes routine to talk to Sam all night on the phone, even though her neurologist told her not to, and even more routine to spend your long lazy days of summer hanging out with her doing absolutely nothing productive. Somehow, in the mix of everything, you also fall back into doing iCarly. You never really discuss it, but one Monday, Sam comes over and pulls a couple crumpled pieces of paper from her pocket and drops them next to you on the couch. You ask what they are, and she simply replies, "ideas for iCarly." Something inside you lights up when she says that, something you're realizing was dull before.

You and Sam have another serious conversation after your second show back from a long break of iCarly, and there's something so different between this conversation and the ones you've had in the past, like part of you thought there was a possibility in the past that you both might just walk away from this relationship entirely, but this time there's no chance of that. It's a little after midnight and you're still up in the iCarly studio sprawled across a beanbag and she's mimicking your pose on an adjacent beanbag. She's holding your hand from an awkward angle, running her thumb over your fingers every time you add something to the conversation and staring up at the beam running across the ceiling.

Its been a while since either of you have said anything, but you know she's still awake from her fingers intermittently tightening and releasing their grip on your hand. "I wanted to break with you." You say out of the blue, your voice feeling really loud in the silence of such a large space. "That's why I didn't want to see you after you got out of the hospital and after. Every time I looked at you I just wanted to fall apart with you."

She doesn't respond, but a few minutes after you stop speaking, you feel a vibration in your pocket and when you pull your cell phone out, you find she's sent you a text message.

_I've always liked you, you know, in an off kind of way._

You smile. God, it's ridiculous how much you love this girl.

Midway through August, Sam's seizure meds begin to finally work on her without any side effects and she stops staying up quite so late and so instead of midnight conversations, she calls you around ten and you talk until she falls asleep. The weekend before school starts, Spencer drives you to Yakima to spend a couple days with your grandfather. Sam says goodbye to you the night before you leave with a short hug and a warning about bugs, and you want so badly to hold on to her longer because it feels like you haven't said enough, hugged enough, nothing's enough yet, but, you remind yourself, its only a weekend away.

Yakima is boring. You used to go easier on it, but if feels like such a critical time in your life to be ripped away from Seattle and forced to pitter around your grandfather's house that its really all you can think. You text Sam almost constantly the three days you're away, and talk to her every night, as is now normal.

"Are you spending any time with your granddad?" Sam asks on your second night away.

You frown, staring out and up at the stars that are your favorite part of being in the middle of nowhere. "Of course I am. Why?"

"Cuz it feels like your spending all your time talking to me." She says honestly. "Not that I don't like it, I'm just saying. He might want a little of your time. Are you scared I'll do something bad if we're apart for a few days?"

"No," is your immediate answer, but its kind of a lie. "Well, okay, maybe. I still worry about you a lot."

"Come on, Carly. It's been a couple months since I touched any of that stuff, and I did the whole first month while we weren't talking, remember?" She says.

"Well, it's not entirely that." You mutter. "I guess its really hit me lately how much I… I…"

"You what?"

"How much you mean to me."

She doesn't say anything for several minutes. Sam's never been good about discussing her feelings, especially when it's brought up unexpectedly. "Well, I, you know…" She eventually says and I smile really big, giggling.

"I know."

School starts up a few days after you get back and you've never been happier for it since it ends what has to be the most dramatic, life-altering summer of your life. Sam and you always have very similar schedules, meaning she's in most of your classes. You think the school does it on purpose with the hopes you'll keep her in line. Not that you're any better at controlling her than anybody else, but you enjoy the extra time you get to spend with her. On top of that, being back in school means she follows you home most days of the week under the pretext of 'doing homework.'

"You know, I kind of hate Ms. Briggs." Sam says on a Thursday the week after school starts. "She's so mean to me."

"You covered her car in raw meat!" You exclaim.

"And I still don't get how that's a bad thing!" She says.

You smile over at her and realize how much you've been smiling lately, and her too. So much has changed in the last couple of months and you can't help but think you and Sam are closer than ever before.

You plop down on your bed, pulling out your homework because your teachers are just that cruel, and wondering if you'll be able to convince Sam to settle down and do her own, or at least be quiet long enough for you to accomplish something. And she is currently being quiet, but she's sitting on the foot of your bed, staring at you with a twisted, off-beat smile and its hard enough to concentrate when she's looking at you, let alone with that sort of expression.

"What?" You say after a few minutes.

She shakes her head, going back to messing on her cell phone. You turn back to your homework, but only seconds go by before you feel your cell phone vibrate in your pocket. You glare at her as you pull it out.

_I've always liked you, you know, in an off kind of way._

"Are you going to explain it to me now?"

She shrugs, scooting closer. It's sunny outside and it's blaring into your room and lighting up Sam's hair like she's something purer than humans are capable of becoming, something almost ethereal, which is weird since Sam is so far from innocent. Her eyes glitter, shiny and blue as the ocean, and before you can stop yourself, your hand is resting against the pale skin of her cheek and homework is the last thing on your mind. She's not smiling anymore, and somehow she ended up sitting right next to you with her hand holding your hand to her cheek and she's gazing at you like there's something sitting right there that you're missing and she can't bring herself to say it.

Time is frozen and its just you and her and you can't really break yourself away from her eyes or slow your heart back down or stop all the blood rushing to pump through your brain, but it's a good feeling that you wouldn't mind being stuck in for eternity.

"Sam…"

When she leans forward and presses her lips so gently against yours, you leave your eyes open and admire how she looks even prettier the closer up she gets, how light her eyelashes are against her porcelain skin, how golden her hair is and how it glints in the sun and how much you never want to be any further away from her than you currently are.

"I've always liked you, you know, in an off kind of way." She mumbles against your lips, kissing the corner of your mouth.

"Yeah, I get it."


End file.
